Page 60 (1/2)

"Looks like it," I said "I keep hoping I’ll pick up a lead"

"It’d be nothin’ more than damn luck after all this time"

"Sometimes I canhis double chins at et anywhere with this It’s no point Bailey’s confessed and, by God, it’s gonna stick Royce don’t want to believe he’s guilty and I can understand that He’s near dead and he doesn’t want to go to his grave with a cloud hanging over hie the facts"

"Hoe even knohat the facts are at this point?" I said "She died seventeen years ago Bailey disappeared the year after that"

"My point exactly," Pearl said "This is old news A dead horse Bailey aduilty He could’ve been out by now instead of starting all over Look at hi who knohat We oing through his head"

"Pearl, I don’t want to argue with you, but I won’t give up"

"Then you’re a bigger fool than he is"

I’d just about had umentative old men Who asked him? "I appreciate your assesslanced at et back"

Neither Rick nor Pearl seeo I could feel their eyes onme the kind of look that makes you want to step up your pace a bit

I walked the two blocks to the motel It was just after ten, and two black-and-whites were parked side by side across the street Two young cops were leaning on the fenders, coffee cups in hand while their radio kept up a running account of as going on in town I kept thinking about Rick I kneas lying, but I had no idea why Unless he killed her hihed hi to look important at the time, the last man who’d seen Jean Timberlake alive It was bound to lend him status in a community the size of Floral Beach

I took my keys out as I went up the outside stairs It was dark on the second-floor landing, but I caught a whisper of cigarette s in the shadow of the vending ht inhere?" She stepped out of the dark, the di her face hite "I’m sick of Rick’s bs"

Iback at her "You want to coets home and I’m out, he’ll want to knohere I’ve been"